


Henry Hart

by amyanomaly



Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Mental Institutions, Murder, Shapeshifting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-11
Updated: 2013-10-11
Packaged: 2017-12-29 02:15:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/999675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amyanomaly/pseuds/amyanomaly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Henry saw something that winter that changed his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Henry Hart

 

> Don't worry, it's not gonna hurt  
>  Oh, my reputation's kinda clouded with dirt  
>  That's why you sleep with one eye open  
>   
>  \- Girl with One Eye by Florence and the Machine

 

“Henry, the only way you can face your fears is if you can say them out loud. Admittance is the first step of recovery.”

The man looks up at her, scowling. “I’m not a fucking alcoholic.”

“I’m only trying to help you,” she says, clicking her pen. She crosses her ankles, shoe heels clicking together in the silence of the room.

“Doc, I don’t need your damn help facing my fears. I need you to understand that my fears are fucking real.”

“Mr. Hart, we’ve talked about your language. If you can’t refrain from swearing—”

Henry rolls his eyes away from her and stares out the window. The bars across the glass obscured his view, but he wasn’t really seeing the autumn leaves spread across the dying lawn.

“Can we run through what happened that night?” She stares down at her clipboard, at the sparse notes she was able to scribble down for the day. She tucks a strand of red hair behind her ear.

“You remind me of her, you know,” Henry says, eyes fixed on something outside.

“Your sister?” Doctor Marion asks.

He nods once.

“It was winter,” Henry says and focuses on Doctor Marion’s buckled shoes. She sits up straight, interested in this new piece of information. She already knew the details from the police, but Henry had never offered anything real.

“Yes, it was January, wasn’t it?”

He nods. “It was so cold. She was... our parents went away. But not far. They stayed at the ski resort for their anniversary.”

Doctor Marion nods. Henry picks at the sleeve of his pullover sweatshirt. The handcuff around his right wrist cuts tight into his skin. He pulls the fabric up over his left forearm and rubs at the tree inked into his skin.

“You and Hanna had matching tattoos,” Doctor Marion says.

Henry ignores her, pulls out a crumpled pack of cigarettes from the pocket on his chest and pulls one out. He places it between his lips and stares at the doctor.

“You can’t smoke in here, Henry.”

“If you’re gonna say her fucking name, I need to smoke.”

Doctor Marion stands, and walks towards the door, shoes clacking against the linoleum. She knocks on the door and it opens, revealing an orderly. He steps into the room and says, “Everything okay, Doctor?”

“Henry would like a cigarette.”

The man furrows his brow, but walks around until he’s facing Henry. He pulls a silver lighter from his pocket and flips it open. He lights Henry’s cigarette and watches as the patient inhales deeply.

“Thank you, that’s all,” Doctor Marion states, still holding the door open so the orderly can leave.  The man nods, pocketing his lighter and watches the doctor go back to her chair as the door falls closed.

“They all want to know,” Henry says.

“You haven’t spoken to anyone about what happened besides the police that night.”

“I need some time,” he says, exhaling a cloud of smoke.

“Henry, it’s been three years.”

He stares at her, cigarette nearly against his lips and his eyes widen slightly. This is the most emotion she’s seen from him in all three years.

“Three years,” he says to himself and on the next inhale he schools his features back to disinterest. His eyes flick down to the floor. “Well if he hasn’t come for me now, then he’s never going to.”

“Who, Henry?”

“The man that killed my sister, my best friend, my parents, my fucking dog.”

Doctor Marion scribbles down _DOG?_ at the top of her page. “You kil—he killed your dog?”

“Yes. But I don’t want to talk about it.”

~

Henry’s arms are restrained, pulled behind his back and handcuffed together. He struggles, tries to scream, but the tape muffles any noise he makes. He shifts his legs, barely moving against his restraints.

“Henry!” A voice yells and he focuses on the sound. Across the room, his sister is pressed to her knees. A man stands behind her, with a fistful of her red hair. He yanks her back hard, punishing her for the outburst.

Henry tries to say her name. He looks up at the man, trying to understand why someone would do this.

The man holding his sister looks exactly like him. He’s wearing clothes that Henry knows were in his closet: jeans with a hole in the right knee, sneakers and a black sweatshirt. His hair matches Henry’s recent buzz cut and blue-green eyes stare back at him.

The man grins at Henry’s understanding. Henry struggles, tries to break loose any extremity, but all he gets is metal digging into his skin.

“Henry,” the man says, using Henry’s voice. He flinches at the sound of it. “I’m going to kill her.”

Hanna cries out, tears streaming down her face, and the man pushes her forward until she falls to the floor. The man leans over, keeping his grip in her hair, and stands with a foot on either side of her body.

Henry screams, surges forward and nearly topples over the chair. The man glares over at him for a moment, but quickly focuses back on Hanna. She brings up a hand and grips the man’s wrist, tries to pry his fingers out of her hair. He moves his feet closer together, pressed in close to her waist.

“I’m going to kill you, bitch,” the man says. He turns Hanna’s face towards her brother. “Your brother’s gonna kill you.”

“No, please,” Hanna begs and grabs his arm. She pulls hard and the man loses his balance and falls forward, barely catching himself with the hand that was wrapped in Hanna’s hair. She scrambles up as the man rights himself, but she isn’t fast enough. She turns at the sound of a low click and turns around, watching as the man points a gun at Henry’s head.

“You leave, he dies,” the man says. He takes a step backwards, closer to Henry. The barrel of the gun presses to the side of Henry’s head. “But he doesn’t really die. See, I’ll take his place and no one will know. No one will believe you. But I’ll be here and one day I’ll kill you nice and slow.”

Hanna squeezes her eyes shut, tries to think about what Henry would do. He would tell her to run, but he wouldn’t if she was the one with a gun to her head. She takes a step towards Henry and the man.

“Good,” the man says, sounding so identical to Henry that she pauses for a second. When he was threatening her, Henry had never spoke to her like that, with such cruelty in his voice.

The man grabs Hanna again, this time by her throat and shoves her down until she’s back to kneeling on the floor. She’s only a foot away from Henry and she stares into his eyes and tries to figure out what he’s trying to say.

“Henry, it’s not your fault,” she whispers. “It’s okay. It’s okay, don’t cry.”

The man replaces the gun in the waistband of his pants and then he takes a utility knife from his pocket. Henry had never seen the gun before, but the knife is from the desk in his bedroom.

The silver blade is slowly slid out and the man presses it to Hanna’s cheek. He pulls downward and watches Henry’s face as the blood starts to bead up. Hanna grits her teeth, tries not to flinch and cry out.

~

Doctor Marion watches out the common room window as Henry is led out to the smoking gazebo. He shuffles along, head bowed and looking nearly dead to the world. Sometimes the medication has a negative effect, Doctor Marion knows, and Henry’s seems to take away all his will to live.

She barely knows why he still wants to live when he so clearly misses the people he killed.

The orderly with Henry lights his cigarette. The orderly starts to talk and Henry raises his head slightly, like he’s trying to be polite and listen. Doctor Marion wonders if maybe she missed something, because Henry never attempts to be polite with anyone.

The orderly pats Henry on the shoulder and smiles at him. Henry looks back down, but the doctor can see him start to talk. She starts towards the door outside and wonders for a second if her presence will cause Henry to lock up airtight again, but figures this is as good a chance as any. If Henry’s smoking, Henry’s happy and sometimes he even talks.

It’s cool outside and Doctor Marion wishes she had time to go back for her coat, when the orderly stands up a little straighter. Henry turns to see why.

“Well, doc, knew you’d come along sooner or later,” Henry mutters, not taking the cigarette from his mouth.

Doctor Marion smiles and leans against the railing of the gazebo. Henry tries to blow smoke in her direction, but it disappears against the wind. He frowns.

The orderly shakes his head, amused. “So you were telling me about your dog.”

Henry glances at Doctor Marion. “Yeah. He was pretty ugly. I got him from a shelter and they told me he was a part of some dog fighting ring. But he was a sweetheart once I got a hold of him. But anyways, how old’s your new dog?”

“He’s just a puppy,” the orderly says. His name is Joshua, Doctor Marion reads from his nametag.

“Mm,” Henry says, and hunches in on himself. He rubs a hand across his ribs. “Miss my dog.”

“Henry, what happened to your dog?” Doctor Marion asks.

“The man shot him.  Just glanced at the dog in the backyard and shot him without even thinking. He was barking too much,” Henry says. He closes his eyes for a few moments. “That’s when the man killed my best friend.”

~

Henry cries, tears streaming down his face and onto the neck of his t-shirt. The noises he makes sound foreign to him. Hanna lays in front of him, lifeless and bloody, eyes still open. The man leans against the doorway, watching Henry. Henry chokes, tries to suck in air through his mouth but can’t and thinks for a split second that this is it, he’s dying. But the man rushes over, tilts his face up and yanks the tape off. Henry greedily and reluctantly gasps.

“Don’t scream,” the man says forcibly, bringing his face down almost level with Henry’s. He stares hard at Henry and Henry’s never seen that kind of hatred across his own features before.

Henry nods in understanding. The man leans down, cuts the zip-ties around Henry’s legs and pulls him out of the chair. Henry stumbles, wonders how long he had been tied to the chair while he had been unconscious and the man marches him towards the back door.

The utility knife is pressed against his throat as they walk out the door, across the deck, and towards the driveway.  The dog is barking loud, harshly and the man trades the knife for the gun and shoots the dog.

Henry involuntarily cries out, but he doesn’t turn to look at his dog, lying in the dirt, bleeding out. Henry tries to run, makes it a few steps away, before another person appears at the end of the driveway.

“Hey, Henry, what’s—”

His best friend crumples to the ground, like a puppet with its strings cut and Henry tries to go to him, but the man grabs his still handcuffed arms. Henry feels the tackiness of the blood on his bare wrists. He swallows, tries not to throw up at the thought of Hanna’s blood.

~

Henry pales and swallows, looks between the doctor and Joshua. He bites his lip and brings the cigarette shakily to his mouth. He focuses his eyes on the orderly.

“You think I did it?” Henry asks. Joshua shifts and glances toward Doctor Marion.

“Don’t look at her for an answer,” Henry tells him, not angry, but kind of sad. Doctor Marion nods slightly.

Joshua shocks both of them and even himself by saying, “No, Henry. I don’t think you did it.”

Henry stares across at the orderly, then huffs a laugh as he looks down at his slip-on shoes.

“Time to go in,” Joshua tells him. He waits for Henry to stub out his cigarette and drop it into the trash can. Doctor Marion watches with arms crossed as Henry shuffles along next to Joshua.

She sighs and wonders whether or not Joshua truly believes Henry’s story.

~

Henry shuffles into his room and sighs when the door sweeps closed behind him and makes a clicking noise as it locks. He sits on the edge of his bed and pulls out his pack of cigarettes from the pocket on the front of his shirt. He taps the box on the palm of his open hand and peeks inside. There are only five left.

A moment later, the door to Henry’s room opens and slipping in his Joshua, still wearing his white pants and shirt, though Joshua knows his shift must be over.

“Wanna light this for me?” Henry asks and holds out his cigarette. Joshua takes it, pulls a lighter from his jeans and looks around the blank walls and desk covered with books. He hands the lit cigarette back.

“I got no idea what’s going on in the world. You should smuggle in a newspaper or something,” Henry suggests and brings the cigarette to his lips. Joshua nods, facing away from him and then he circles around the room before sitting next to Henry on the bed. He turns his body slightly, facing Henry and meets Henry’s gaze.

Joshua smiles, but it’s not his normal smile. His eyes gleam with evil intent and Henry tries to back away. Joshua isn’t Joshua. The man who killed his family and friend stares at him through Joshua’s kind brown eyes.

“Why are you doing this?” Henry asks.

The man’s hand shoots upwards, towards Henry’s neck and he lets the man grip his throat. _Tight._ Henry forgets about his lit cigarette, lets it fall to the bed and burn a whole through the white fabric. He’s pressed up against the cement wall, with nowhere to go. He reaches up to grab the man’s wrist. Fingernails dug into the flesh and the man’s hand presses in tighter. Henry’s vision starts to go black as he struggles to breathe.

When his body goes limp, the man lets him fall sideways against the pillow. He grabs the cigarette before it burns the linen too much and brings it to his lips.

Before he even reaches the door, he no longer looks like Joshua the orderly. He pulls long red hair over his shoulder and smirks.


End file.
